Stari Most

The Old Bridge of Mostar, Stari Most, springs across the green Neretva in a single, steeply humped stone arch about 30 m long and 4 m wide, some 24 m above the summer water. It is the heart and the name of the city: the Mostari were the bridge-keepers who guarded it, and two fortified towers, Halebija on the north-east bank and Tara on the south-west, still stand at either end. Ottoman sources describe the wooden suspension bridge it replaced as swaying so badly that people crossed it in mortal fear.

Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent commissioned the new bridge, and it was designed by Mimar Hayruddin, a pupil of the great architect Sinan; the inscription dates its completion to 1566–67. It has no foundations as such: its limestone abutments are tied into the rock walls of the gorge, and the arch rises from them in one leap. At the time it was the widest man-made arch in the world, and the traveller Evliya Çelebi, who claimed to have seen sixteen countries, wrote that he had never seen so high a bridge. Local tradition says Hayruddin was so sure it would fall when the scaffolding came down that he prepared his own funeral.

The bridge stood for 427 years until it was shelled and collapsed into the river on 9 November 1993, during the war in Bosnia. After the war an international effort rebuilt it as faithfully as possible, using the same technique and the local limestone called tenelija, with stones recovered from the riverbed; it opened again on 23 July 2004, and the Old Bridge Area of the Old City of Mostar was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2005. The old custom of diving from the parapet into the cold river continues: young men of the town have jumped for generations, a formal competition has been held each summer since 1968, and the bridge has been a stop on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series since 2015.

Getting there

The bridge is in the old town of Mostar, less than 1 km from the city centre. Mostar International Airport (OMO) is about 7 km away.